Wizards of the Coast Reviews

Pros

They have good benefits. Managers provide great professional growth and help you to succeed.

Cons

They have frequent reorgs without notice. Horrible raises and have lower than average salaries. A

Advice to Senior Management

Be more informative. Offer competitive salaries.

Pros

Great, smart people. Lots of room to be your own boss. Flexible hours and great benefits.

Cons

Not much recognition for jobs well done.Management doesn't always need to be at 30,000 feet, would like to see them come down once in a while.

Pros

We make great games. It's a fun place to work. We are very passionate about gaming and most of my co-workers love the products we produce.

Cons

We kill a lot of good game ideas before they are able to reach the market. It makes me wonder what might have been.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue keeping the game community involved. Have fewer products produced by Hasbro Far East. We need more brand people with a game or entertainment background in marketing.

Pros

They have work life balance down in that no one really works that hard in comparison to other IT jobs.

Cons

The place is full of passive aggressive politics and back stabbing. This is encouraged by management and leads to a culture avoidance and CYA that makes doing your job very difficult.

Advice to Senior Management

Clean house. Bring in real technology product development people and a proven process that can be used to build real products for your consumers.

Pros

Good benefits at the company. Many of the people who work there are nice.

Cons

Management has favorites. Not a fun place to work. Communication between departments is lacking. There doesn't seem to be a clear direction for the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat people who work on smaller brands w/ respect. The company has changed a lot.

Pros

Flexible work schedules, friendly coworkers, and playing games during work.

Cons

Lack of career advancement opportunities, favoritism from senior management towards "friends" when promoting employees, the cultural environment is that of gamers so if you aren't a herd core gamer you may find it difficult to breach the political favoritism entrenched within the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn to be an unbiased manager, go back to school and take some business classes, and just because you have a BA in English doesn't mean you know how to properly execute projects, marketing plans, and employee management.

Pros

Respectful work environment, appreciation for contributions, low stress, friendly and supportive coworkers.

Cons

Job security is moderate, at best. The company has a strong tendency to take on challenges that are beyond the abiltily of the organization to deliver on. Agile development requires clear and concise goals and requirements, and a strong project and strong project management to keep the schedule on track. Wizards record on this is mildly poor on this due to limited experience in software development market.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep project scope well defined with clear requirements. Resist the temptation to pre-announce software products unless the schedule is certain and near completion.

Pros

It's a job with a salary

Cons

Lack of job mobility and a non flexible company

Advice to Senior Management

Expect too much from non-flexible online programming

Pros

Free product! 300 points (dollars) a quarter to spend in the company store (an extra handful of points during Christmas), although the company store tends to not be stocked as much as one might expect. Lots of very smart people to work around who have creative ideas to exchange. Fun and goofy work environment, as you might expect from a game company. Free parking and access to gym. Owned by Hasbro so there are some benefits via that company as well, such as the entire week of Christmas is paid holiday. Opportunity to playtest games and play lots of Magic and D&D with other like-minded people.

Cons

Management still seems to be grappling with how best to move into the digital era, so things are shifting heavily within the company and lots of decisions seem to either not make sense or not be followed through a couple of months later. The vast majority of employees are very smart and very nice, but can lack some social skills. Company store is not as well stocked as it should be. No place to eat within walking distance. Gym is small. Those are all very nitpicky, it really is a great place to work if you are into games.

Advice to Senior Management

Get a handle on how to manage a software development company.

Pros

Awesome benefits, a collaborative work atmosphere, and ridiculously cool IPs (Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons). You get to do creative work in an environment that values it highly. And from a game designer point of view it has the single highest concentration of them I've seen at any company, creating a work environment filled with fascinating discussions, deep knowledgebases to draw upon and the best tangential blathering you can imagine.

Cons

The company is part of Hasbro and has some of the inertia and bureaucracy of a large company.

Advice to Senior Management

Less focus on managerial buzzwords, more on getting actual product out the door. Yes process can help, but in general nimbleness wins.